[B2B Only] How To Add $1M in Revenue in 2024

?? WARNING: The advice in this article will make you between $500K and $2M in extra revenue – without having to hire any extra team members or increase your marketing budget.

This will be especially true if you work in industries like:

• Industrial Automation & IoT
• Cybersecurity Solutions
• IT Services / Consulting
• Enterprise SaaS
• HealthTech
• FinTech

Or any other industry where the average deal flow sits at around 6 figures or more.

Let's get into it

Let’s say you have an average deal volume of $150.000.

Most of your business comes from:

• The sales people your hire not because of skill, but because of their network
• Leads that the PE firm who acquired you sends you
• Referrals from current customers

The situation is stable, your revenue is unpredictable, and your lead flow? Inconsistent.

On top of that, your PE firm wants more results. They have ambitious plans, which means they put pressure on you... But you hit a glass ceiling:

? Prospects make way too many objections, and you need to educate them a lot before they buy.

? You attend industry events, but 10-14 months go by before you turn those leads into deals.

? You have a wide portfolio of diverse solutions across many industries.

? You do some Marketing, but it’s proven ineffective.

Now that I ran an MRI on your business, let’s talk about the steps you need to take to fix this in 3 months:

MONTH 1 | FOUNDATIONS

Planning Phase - Workshop

Goal: Define your UVP, your target audience, and assess your product & service portfolio

Task: Call for an all-hands on deck strategy session with Management and the heads of Marketing, Sales, and HR. Set up a virtual or in-person appointment for 3 days. Then hire an external to facilitate the meeting and guide you through it as follows:

• Day 1 | Evaluate products and services, identify your “Big Mac”, start getting clarity on your Ideal Customer.
• Day 2 | Narrow down the target audience, the problems you solve, and your UVP.
• Day 3 | Review the outcome of the first two days, create a list of the main challenges you’re facing, set goals and assign an accountable person to each goal. Set the date for another strategy session (1 day only) in 3 months

Execution Support

That external you hired? They’re in charge of the high-level strategy now, and they report directly to someone in Management.

The reason is simple: Management can’t go full “helicopter mom” mode and start overseeing and micromanaging. They need to run the company. But the strategy won’t get implemented if no one keeps people accountable and guides them through implementation.

And implementation starts with Marketing, so the rest of Month 1 is your external + Marketing. The goals:

• Interviewing existing and past clients
• Updating all customer profiles
• Improving the messaging on every marketing asset
• Reviewing data of past successes

MONTH 2 | OPERATIONS

Now that you have the foundation, the hardest part is over. Your external will keep refining it for the rest of this “sprint”, but the focus now shifts to something way more tactical: Sales.

At this point, your external will embed into your Sales team to:

• Discuss customer pain points
• Prepare scripts and frameworks
• Develop an outreach strategy
• Improve sales team culture

The goals of this phase are translating everything that until now was high-level, and bringing to the customer level.

The result? Easier sales and a higher close rate because of better targeting, clear differentiation, and modern sales strategies that don’t disrupt your processes.

MONTH 3 | PERFORMANCE READINESS

Now your business is a well-oiled machine, but there’s one last measure to take: If you don’t want everything to return to what it was before, your teams need to stop working in siloes.

You do that by creating, with your external, what I call a Cluster of Effective Culture. It’s a expression word to say: You go cross-functional, with a team led by your externals.

I will cover this topic next week, but here’s the gist of it:

• You put together a team of Sales, Marketing and Product (coders/requirement engineers)
• You place the external on top of it as interim leader
• You give them 3 months to create best practices and new workflows
• You assess their performance, and if they're ready you replace the external with someone from your internal team as their new leader,

That Cluster of Effective Culture will result in new culture practices that will organically develop, and that will become a role model for all other teams in the company – which means you will have a group that drives performance, and a model that you can replicate and expand multiple times until your entire business operates like a customer-oriented orchestra.

Is This Simplistic?

I know this sounds overly simplified – but not all solutions have to be complicated, and sometimes the answer you're seeking is not in hiring five PhDs and three former Professors. Nor is it in doubling down on budget waste you can't afford.

Often, investing in your internal processes and assets is only thing separating your organization from the goals Management, the Board or your PE firm is pushing for.